“We wouldn’t want you to go,” he answered, as he followed her into the hall. “Anyway, I’d want to keep you here.”
She did not appear to notice the change of pronoun, nor the fact that his voice had dropped on the last sentence. With her white dress sweeping spectrally before him he followed her into the dim parlor.
Something in the intimacy of the still, soft dusk, and the sudden wakening into imperious dominance of his feeling for her, made him move away from her and about the room. Through the open door of the dining-room he saw the white square of the table glimmering in the twilight, with one place set, the crumpled napkin on the cloth, the single wine glass, its lower half dark with wine, a scattering of crimson cherries dotting the glaze of a plate.
“Did you dine alone, too?” he asked.
“Yes, father’s dining in town to-night and you or Black Dan sent the Colonel into Empire till to-morrow.”
She looked round at him over her shoulder, the lighted match in her hand sending a glow over her face, which was half-plaintive, half-laughing.
“It’s very mean of you to send the Colonel away on nights when he dines with me.”
“Well, honestly, I never thought about it,” stammered Rion, trying to look contrite, but glad in his heart that the Colonel was, for this evening at least, well out of the way. “And, anyway, it was Dan who sent him. He thinks there are certain things nobody can do as well as Parrish.”
“Of course he’s right about that,” she answered. “But he ought to remember that one of the things the Colonel does best is to be company for me.”
The gas was lit and she was adjusting the shade of a lamp on a side table. As she spoke she looked over the bright chimney at him, with the smile that held in it so much of melancholy.